What a year! 2023 is coming to an end…

2023 was a turbulent year for me. I am grateful for many great experiences that helped me to grow as a novice scholar and as a person. In the following I would like to reflect in a few paragraphs on this past year. But before I start: Merry Christmas and happy end-of-the-year holidays to everyone! I hope you will have a marvellous New Year’s Eve and that you will find the strength to follow up on your new year’s resolutions.

My 2023 started unconventional as I stayed for six weeks in the 180.000-people-town of Darmstadt in Western Germany (close to the Frankfurt with the airport). As visiting scholar at the Division for History of Science led by Martina Heßler, I was able to discuss our work in a new environment and to pick up on some new theory perfectly fitting for my dissertation. I also found new (and old) friends there, which was great. This stay certainly also helped to keep the connection between our division at KTH and Darmstadt alive.

On 20 March 2023 it was time for my final seminar (80%) of my doctoral education. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė from Kingston University in London travelled from the United Kingdom to Stockholm to discuss the development of my dissertation. This seminar was a key event in my education at KTH and it helped me to improve my text tremendously. Following this seminar I regrouped and then created a plan for finishing the dissertation. A plan that later had to be revised.

In 2023 I presented my research in Darmstadt (Germany), Tübingen (Germany), Bern (Switzerland), and at different venues in Stockholm. As always, presenting helps to sharpen the arguments and the feedback from the audience supports the writing process. Personally, I enjoy public speaking and while these events were stressful, they were also all very rewarding.

From spring until the end of 2023 I also acted as PhD-representative at our Department of History and Philosophy at KTH. This was a new experience for me on a doctoral level of student administration; a responsibility I at first did not want to take over but eventually fit in reasonably well.

As 2023 was coming to a close, the writing and finalisation process of my dissertation took over all my work. Slowly I finished all my teaching responsibilities and focussed on improving the kappa and the individual articles. In the end, the writing took longer than we previously planned. Nevertheless, the defence is now scheduled for 22 March 2024. After some brief holidays, I will start again working on the dissertation on 2 January in the new year.

“Thank you” to everyone who impacted my work so positively during the past twelve months! Let’s hope 2024 will be even better, with lots of Nuclearwaters-publications coming up.